Interfacial properties of Cu/SiO2 using a multiscale modelling approach in electronic packages

Interfacial properties of Cu/SiO₂ in semiconductor devices has continued to be the subject of challenging study for many years because of its difficulties in experimentally quantifying the critical strength of interface. In this paper, a multi-scale modeling approach is built to characterize the interfacial properties between Cu and SiO₂. In this system, the Cu and SiO₂ are bonded together by three types of chemical bonds, Cu-OO, Cu-O, and Cu-Si, which cause three atomistic interfacial structures. For Cu-O and Cu-Si bonded interfaces, the fracture occurs exactly at the interface, however, the fracture for Cu-OO bonded interface occurs at copper layer near the interface, which indicate two different fracture criterions coexist in Cu/SiO₂ system. And, the calculated interfacial strength at macroscale is in agreement with available experimental results.